• How to Develop a Strong Community in your online Art Class?

    Because of the coronavirus pandemic, teachers and their students are separated. This is why it is important to keep in touch with your students during this period of confinement. This link is based on certain practices already used in class.

    Caitlin Krause , teacher for two decades and educational consultant. She moved much of her online curriculum a decade ago. In addition, she used all of the tools to engage her students: an online collaborative text tool called TitanPad or other stationery items. It allows you to work with several people, from several different computers, on the same document, and to make direct modifications, visible at the same time by all the connected computers.

     

    She created a class blog with her students to boost her lessons. The blog can encourage struggling students to get involved in writing and creating via pencils or brushes. Here she shares five effective tips for keeping in touch with her students:

     

    1. Take care of yourself

    This time of confinement which is imposed on us can be seen as an opportunity to take more care of ourselves. We are rethinking the good habits adopted during this period can become permanent. Do you have more time? This is most precious. Make good use of it.

     

    Start your day with a moment "yours". For example,  mindfulness meditation can help us overcome our anxieties during confinement. This period of pandemic creates "stress, fear, anxiety and all kinds of parasitic thoughts which are not useful, even sometimes toxic". So ten minutes of meditation a day can transform our daily lives.

     

    2. Icebreaker Activities

    At this point, you should focus on building strong connections. It is a virtual community that looks like a tree: deeply rooted, with a feeling of anchoring, and also flexible in its branches, so that you adapt to changing conditions.

     

    Start each online learning with an icebreaker activity: do a physical activity together, play music, take three collective breaths. The goal is to put young people at ease with a fun mystery game afterwards. You can offer students narration exercises.

     

    3. Each student has a role

    In Caitlin Krause's virtual classroom, each student has access to content asynchronously. They have online “journal spaces” to collect their thoughts and reflect, and to share and build idea cards, collaborating to reduce the need for live meetings.

     

    You can keep a flow without everyone working at the same time by creating groups in which each has a role of authority. Some preferred to play the "lexicon builder", collect the new terms we encountered and discover the etymology, definition and connotations. Others are "reference archivists", bringing together useful websites, readings and sources. Others chose to be "curators" who researched the sites and assessed their validity and sources, placing them more in the context of the learning objective. Some preferred to create mind maps of related terms and links to increase their relevance, or models and artistic creations inspired by responses to learning.

    You send a message to your students: everyone is important and everyone can contribute to the creation and development of the learning space.

     

    4. Encourage students to speak

    This is surely important for many students, perhaps for them especially because they are confined in smaller spaces, and they need to get out of this framework, and finally the virtual classroom and the fact to find their teacher and their comrades, that opens up the horizon a little bit. Second, giving students more opportunities to speak builds learning skills and social and emotional confidence, which are complementary to this type of interactive learning. 

     

    5. Practice active listening

    Active listening is a relational skill, knowing how to listen is showing interest and respect for others. So the secret of successful communication is above all active listening.

     

    The teacher should focus on the words of his students without doing anything else or thinking about another subject. In addition, he takes care not to give advice or solutions when his students speak.

     

    When there is an exercise involving group sharing, you can start with smaller groups - where it is easier to make sure everyone is contributing - or try partnership sharing which involves a "stakeout" activity. in mirror ”, where the pupils listen in turn to each other's story or reflection. The listener is silent while the speaker shares, and after a minute or two, reflects on the keywords that stood out, and some of what they heard, without judgment. Then the two students change roles.

     

    In large groups, you can plan the sharing order in advance and publish it in the chat window of your distance learning conference space, to facilitate transitions. Along the way, continue to encourage listening without judgment.


  • Commentaires

    1
    Vendredi 9 Juillet 2021 à 10:07
    I usually do not comment, buut I looked at a few of the responses ere How to Develop a Strong Community in your onlime Art Class? - healthytips. I actually do have 2 questions for you if it's okay. Coulld iit be just me or does itt look like some of the comments appear like they are coming from brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are writing on other places, I'dlike to keesp up with you. Would you post a list of the complete urls of your public sites loke your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile?
    2
    Vendredi 9 Juillet 2021 à 10:38
    Thanks for the auspicious writeup. It in fact was once a amusement account it. Look complex to far added agreeable from you! However, hoow can we keep up a correspondence?
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